


It's Always Been You

by aruarudayo



Category: IDOLiSH7 (Video Game)
Genre: Anxiety, Drunk Sex, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Mitsuki as Team Mom, Mutual Pining, RyuuSou Week Day 1, character introspection, which is basically just Sougo in a nutshell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-21 02:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16151072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aruarudayo/pseuds/aruarudayo
Summary: In the aftermath of a night of too much drinking and not enough inhibitions, Sougo and Ryuunosuke learn just how honest they are when they're not thinking straight.





	It's Always Been You

**Author's Note:**

> I did NOT realize the pun in my summary when I wrote it but I'm now required to keep it.
> 
> Anyway Sougo and Ryuu are dumb as bricks and I love them. If I had my way I would probably make this an even slower burn and feature more characters but it's already past midnight here LOL This is for the RyuuSou week Day 1 NSFW prompt Firsts, but there's actually not that much NSFW content in here hahahahaha 
> 
> Everything written here was written in the past eleven hours and is unbeta'd. I hope you all enjoy!

Sougo wakes up content and surrounded in warmth, the first rays of daylight peeking in through the window and onto his face. His eyes open lazily; if he remembers right, he doesn't have any schedules today, and there's an easy tiredness in his bones that makes going back to sleep so, so inviting right now. He glances at his bedside clock—as much as he wants to sleep in, he has a limit—before deciding he can indulge himself with some more rest. 

Then something shifts against his back, and Sougo realizes that clock wasn’t his; he isn’t at the dorm right now, nor is he alone. 

An arm tightens around his waist, the other flexing slightly beneath his head (he has to stop himself from thinking too much about how his companion apparently has  _muscle_ ). A low hum rumbles briefly by his ear as the person stirs, nuzzling into the back of his neck like a lover, and as if that doesn’t bring a flush to Sougo's face, he nearly dies from mortification as the hand around his waist passes over his skin for a moment and it dawns on him that he's completely bare under the blankets. There's a soreness in his muscles that he's only just noticing along with a growing headache, and as more awareness seeps into him, he can feel his mind going into overdrive. He wracks his brain for anything on how he got here or who he's with, finding a vague recollection of going to a bar with a couple of friends (well that explains the memory loss). Maybe Momo? There were others, but that doesn’t really help him figure out who he apparently slept with last night. 

Finally, Sougo can't put it off any more; he can't remember anything important from last night so he has to turn around to see his partner's face. He really doesn’t want to, not when putting a face to what was clearly a string of terrible decisions makes all of this much too real for his poor heart, but it's the responsible thing to do. As he twists in the person's hold, he hopes it's some stranger, but his hopes are quickly dashed as he comes face to face with none other than Tsunashi Ryuunosuke. 

 

 

 

 

Ryuunosuke abruptly wakes up to a garbled shriek and the sound of something falling off his bed. Disoriented and sporting a major headache, Ryuu props himself up, squinting at the figure scampering around his room. "Sou...go-kun?" he asks tentatively, making the other freeze in his tracks. Ryuu rubs the last bits of sleep from his eyes and tries to take stock of the situation. 

Except it's hard for him to think rationally when Osaka Sougo is standing in front of him without a shred of clothing on. Ryuu's eyes drift over Sougo's body, captivated. Dark bruises litter his torso and what looks like handprints curl around his hips, a stark contrast to his fair skin. A blush rises to the other's cheeks before he covers his face in embarrassment, stammering apologies, though for what, Ryuu can't figure out. Then rationality finally catches up and Ryuu realizes  _he_  must have been the one who put all those marks there, and suddenly he can't look Sougo in the eye either, his own cheeks coloring a shade of red to rival Sougo's.

Sougo jumps back into flitting about the room like an anxious butterfly, picking up clothes and throwing them on, messing up his usually well kept hair even more than it already is. "I'm terribly sorry, Tsunashi-san," he says, and Ryuu can't help but frown at being called that even in this situation. Before he can make any sort of remark, however, Sougo runs out the door.

Ryuu blinks dumbly at the door to his room. The alarm on his clock goes off, signaling he should get up to start the day, which, for lack of any other concrete thoughts, he does gladly. He makes his bed, goes to the kitchen to start the coffeemaker, then goes to the bathroom to take a shower and brush his teeth. It's here that he finds scratch marks all over his back and the full force of the implications hits him like a steamroller.

He had sex with Sougo last night while he was drunk out of his mind, and, naturally, he doesn’t remember a bit of it. Judging from Sougo's reaction, he'd been just as gone as Ryuu, and the fact neither of them had been really present during something like that is much more upsetting than Ryuu thinks it should be. In fact, he's more upset about that than about having sex with Sougo.

Foregoing the shower, Ryuu pulls on a sweatshirt and some running pants and leaves his apartment. He needs to think long and hard about this, and what better way than with a run down the street? 

Despite his image, Ryuu isn't the kind of person to sleep around, and he'd like to think that extends to when he's drunk, too. There had to be something there to begin with, but Ryuu's never really thought about having sex with anyone, let alone Sougo. Except it's true that he does think about Sougo a lot, ever since singing Love & Game with him and Tamaki. He's worried about him—about his situation with his father, about his relationship with Tamaki, about how Ryuu can't seem to get Sougo to say how he really feels about anything. Tamaki wears his heart on his sleeve, so while they were working together Ryuu never had to worry about him, but it's always a mystery with Sougo. 

That might also explain why Ryuu likes drinking with Sougo. Sougo is much more open when it comes to drinking. It's the one thing he's said he enjoys doing with Ryuu, and while Ryuu usually doesn’t remember much of it, who is he to deny Sougo the pleasure—okay, maybe he shouldn’t be using that kind of expression in this situation. Moving on.

Obviously, Ryuu thinks of Sougo as a friend, much like he thinks of Gaku, Tenn, Momo, and Mitsuki as friends, but Gaku and Tenn are in TRIGGER along with him, and he meets Momo and Mitsuki regularly to play sports. Despite not having that kind of regular interaction, he still thinks of Sougo just as highly as his best friends. And when he thinks about it even more, he spends a lot of time with Sougo at work parties, and he realizes with some embarrassment that he unconsciously seeks him out every time for no reason other than wanting to see him.

Why does he seem to favor Sougo? Ryuu wanted to be friends with everyone in IDOLiSH7, but he’d ended up paying a lot of attention to Sougo from the beginning because he knew he was a TRIGGER fan. Then they'd gotten to sing together, and Ryuu had close interactions with both members of MEZZO" but somehow Sougo is the one he'd eventually brought home. He considers Tamaki like a younger brother, and he thought he'd seen Sougo much the same, but obviously that isn’t the case anymore, if it ever actually was. He's always wanted both Tamaki and Sougo to be happy, but perhaps by inserting himself so much in Sougo's life, Ryuu's always wanted to be the one to  _make_  him happy.

Of course, Sougo being gorgeous is just a plus, and Ryuu has force himself to think about something else before he remembers too much about what he saw this morning.

Maybe he's always been attracted to Sougo. Maybe last night was just the culmination of everything he's been repressing for any number of reasons—their work, the fact they’re from different groups, the fact they’re both men, even the idea of entertaining a relationship when he's never thought of it before—and if he knows anything about Sougo, it might have been much of the same for him too. 

But that doesn’t mean anything if Sougo only wants him when they’re drunk. They need to talk, preferably today before Sougo gets too caught in his own head about their relationship, but if Sougo needs some space then at least in the next few days. Ryuu comes to a stop and immediately sends Sougo a text over Rabbit Chat about meeting up some time. 

Now he just has to wait.

 

 

 

Sougo isn’t ignoring Ryuunosuke's messages. He isn’t. He's just busy, that's all. The dorm needs vacuuming, he needs to answer some surveys for a few television programs, he should go grocery shopping, Manager probably has some extra work he can tack on to his schedule—anything but replying to Rabbit Chat messages. 

So maybe he’s avoiding them a little.

He just can't let himself think about it because inevitably he gets embarrassed, which makes him effectively useless until it goes away. But the thought of Ryuu's sleeping face, soft and comfortable, or the image of him moments after waking up, lounging in the sun with barely anything to cover him—

Sougo is much too far gone for this man.

It's never really been a secret how highly Sougo thinks of Ryuu, but he's never really told anyone just how  _often_  he thinks of him, or that those thoughts don’t always have the purest intentions. It's one thing to be a fan, it's another to be fostering an  _enormous_  crush on another man where he wants nothing more than for Ryuu to absolutely  _break_  him—

He isn’t going to let himself think about this. It's wrong, it's disgusting, he shouldn’t ever be thinking about someone that way, much less someone as kind as Ryuu. Though isn’t that the problem; not only does he have the body of a god, his personality is so sweet that it makes Sougo guilty to be on the receiving end of it so often without being able to do much in return. It was probably that sweet personality, the one that always makes Sougo feel cared for, that got them into this mess. Sougo probably forced himself on Ryuu while they were drunk, and Ryuu probably went along with it because Sougo wanted it and the alcohol overshadowed any rational thought that it was a bad idea. This is all Sougo's fault, and he isn’t sure he can face Ryuu again without wanting to die on the spot.

Maybe he can send him an apology gift? Not in person, though that'd be the most polite way to beg for forgiveness. But what's a reasonable gift to apologize for a one night stand—

"Sougo! People need to use the bathroom, so stop cleaning it so much!" 

Mitsuki pulls Sougo out of his thoughts, quite literally, as he drags him out of the bathroom and to the common area where he sits him down on the couch. "What the heck is wrong with you? You've been cleaning the dorm since yesterday like you’ve been possessed. I know you like it tidy, but I'm pretty sure you vacuumed my room at least twice, along with everything else, so this is weird even for you."

"I got caught up thinking about something," Sougo answers vaguely, earning a tired  _tsk_ from Mitsuki. 

"Stay here," Mitsuki orders, pointing to the couch. "No more cleaning."

Sougo peels the rubber gloves off his hands, still wondering idly what he can get Ryuu that says sorry while also saying goodbye. He ignores the pain in his chest at the thought of never seeing Ryuu again; it's for the best. Of course, they can’t avoid each other at work, but at least at work there are lots of people to help Sougo avoid displaying his affections.

Mitsuki once again brings a halt to his continued downward spiral by putting a hot bowl of rice with stir fry under his nose. "You should eat something," Mitsuki suggests. "When you're like this, you tend to skip meals. And if you want to talk about anything while you’re eating, I'm here."

Though it sounds like a kind suggestion, Sougo knows it's more of a well-meaning threat that Mitsuki's going to chase him down if he doesn’t say something on his own right then and there, He also knows that it's only because Mitsuki cares, and it's that thought that makes him smile for the first time in twenty-four hours.

"...I—"

"I said  _while_  you're eating; chopsticks in mouth first, come on."

Sougo barks out a laugh, complying good-naturedly before Mitsuki's impish grin. After a few bites, he starts again, "I may have destroyed my relationship with Tsunashi-san."

"You'll have to be more specific there," Mitsuki says. "Your definition of what's relationship-ending is like normal behavior for most people."

Sougo pauses, chewing his bottom lip while debating whether to be truthful or not. 

"Sougo, I doubt it's as bad as you think it is. I doubt Ryuu-san even thinks it's as bad as you think it is."

"I wouldn’t be surprised if he did though..." Sougo mumbles, picking up another bite of food to stall for time. "We went drinking two nights ago," he says eventually. 

Mitsuki's face loses a bit of its humor. "Ah...you and Ryuu-san with alcohol is not the greatest combination..."

Sougo nods. "I don't remember anything. But...it's clear what happened between us." In lieu of confessing out loud, he pulls down the collar of his shirt to show Mitsuki the hickeys that are still on his skin, waiting for understanding to dawn on his face before hastily fixing his shirt and looking anywhere but Mitsuki.

"You got the second sexiest guy to  _sleep_  with you?!" Mitsuki asks incredulously, voice reaching a pitch and volume that makes Sougo wince.

"I must have done something, because I somehow doubt he would volunteer to do something like that with me."

Mitsuki frowns and fervently shakes his head. "Sougo, Ryuu-san thinks about you a lot," he says, keeping his tone soft and careful. "He's always wondering how you're doing when I talk to him. You're the only one who thinks he shouldn’t care about you."

Sougo thinks he has plenty of reason to think Ryuu shouldn’t care about him, not when Sougo is plain and uninteresting, not when Sougo is too frightened to talk to Ryuu normally, let alone spend time with him, and definitely not when Sougo still wants so much from a relationship that he is sure will be nonexistent soon enough.

"I don’t know what you're thinking right now, but you're starting to look like a sad puppy so you should probably stop," Mitsuki says, flicking him in the forehead and earning a small noise of surprise. "Just talk to him. You're not going to get anywhere just beating yourself up about what's happened. Did he say he didn’t want it?"

Sougo rubs his head. "He didn’t say much of anything before I left his apartment..."

"Then you should talk to him. And listen, this isn’t the end of the world. Ryuu-san just might surprise you." 

Mitsuki gives him one of his thousand-watt smiles, and Sougo finds himself weakly returning it.

"Thank you, Mitsuki-san. I'll think about it."

 

 

 

Sougo has yet to answer any of Ryuu's messages. 

Ryuu doesn’t really want to lose hope, not after finally figuring out he's had feelings for Sougo for a while, but it's hard to feel hopeful when the object of your affections is avoiding you like the plague for over a week. 

Mitsuki had messaged him a few days ago, telling him to "give Sougo time" which possibly means Sougo told him everything but  _still_  didn’t talk to Ryuu, but Ryuu supposes he expected this when he decided to wait for Sougo to come to him. Sougo, who always expects the worst, who never wants to make a scene, who will hold himself back until everything explodes in his face. But Ryuu won't let that happen this time. He can be patient.

Gaku, Tenn, and Anesagi, however, cannot. All three of them have in some capacity commented on how distracted he's been this week, and he's pretty sure Anesagi is about to have an aneurysm over how spacey he is during interviews. He might have also said some things that had to be struck from the record. They may or may not have been about Sougo.

So regardless of how Ryuu wants to give Sougo time, if nothing happens today at the photo shoot they have with IDOLiSH7 and Re:vale, then Ryuu will have to take matters into his own hands. 

Just as he comes to this decision, he spots Mitsuki and Sougo whispering in the corner of the studio, Mitsuki tilting his head pointedly in Ryuu's direction as Sougo appears increasingly flustered. Then Sougo looks up and meets Ryuu's gaze, stopping whatever he was saying to his groupmate for a moment. Ryuu smiles and waves, but perhaps that was a mistake because Sougo reacts like a scared field mouse, eyes widening and his whole body tensing like a spring right before he bolts in the other direction.

"Sougo!" Ryuu hears Mitsuki yell from across the room, turning a few heads. Mitsuki spies him looking over and, instead of following Sougo, he sprints to Ryuu.

"Go after him." 

He doesn’t need to be told twice.

 

 

 

 

As soon as Sougo hears Ryuu's voice in the distance calling his name, he knows he's done for. He can't outrun Ryuu, much like he can no longer outrun this talk. He wants to talk, really he does, but he isn’t sure he wants anything to change. He's grown complacent, content with absorbing the small bits of interaction he gets to have with Ryuu during work or the occasional get-together, and while the possibility of more is there according to Mitsuki, there is also very much the possibility of losing what he already has. He has yet to come to terms with that possibility, but he supposes it's now or never as Ryuu takes a hold of his wrist, stopping him in his tracks.

"Tsunashi-san, please let go of me," Sougo says meekly, knowing Ryuu won’t.

"We need to talk," Ryuu says.

"I think I need a little more time—"

"Then  _I'll_  talk."

Sougo purses his lips, eyes on the ground, bracing himself.

"I think I'm in love with you."

Sougo blinks, turning around to look at Ryuu in surprise. "Excuse me?"

Ryuu blushes, and suddenly their roles are reversed with Ryuu refusing to meet Sougo's gaze even as Sougo stares wide-eyed at him. "I-I think I'm in l-love with you," he stammers, significantly less sure now that he has Sougo's full attention.

Sougo's heart pounds in his chest, the layers of anxiety starting to fall away. Still, he has to be sure. He hasn’t even told Mitsuki about this insecurity, the idea that Ryuu is deluding himself into caring for him now because they’ve been intimate. A selfish part doesn’t even want to ask the question at this point, but he has to know. "But...is that because we had sex? Or because of just....me?" 

The response is instantaneous. "It's always been you. Even before this week."

Sougo can't help the heat rising to his cheeks after that, nor can he help the way his lips curl into a smile. "Did...did you get that from a drama?"

Ryuu laughs. "Maybe. But it's true." He bends down slightly to look at him straight on, gently resting his hands on Sougo's shoulders before asking, "What about you?"

Sougo has never voiced his desires for Ryuu, and he can't even now, not when his heart is practically in his throat, but actions speak louder than words as he leans in and presses his lips to Ryuu's. With how Ryuu quickly falls into the kiss, Sougo figures he has some time to say it properly later.

A whoop of joy causes them to break apart, finding Mitsuki and Momo right behind Ryuu in the hallway.

"It's about time!" Mitsuki says with a huff.

"I thought you two would never get together!" Momo says gleefully. "When I didn't hear anything after I sent you two home together after our drinking party, I was worried that was the end!"

Ryuu and Sougo exchange looks. "Wait, you were there, Momo-san?!" Ryuu asks.

"Yeah, I figured something would happen if it was just you two, and you both had a bit too much but I thought it might be better if you two were together—why are you two looking at me like that?!"

 

 

 

 

Ryuu whistles in appreciation once they're alone again, having shooed the other two away after Sougo gave Momo a long lecture about drinking with friends. "That was kind of amazing, Sougo-kun. Remind me not to get on your bad side."

Sougo flushes. "I wish you hadn’t seen that, but I'm afraid I let my emotions get the better of me."

"I think you should let yourself get emotional sometimes. It's not good to keep it in."

"Because then it comes out when you're under the influence, right?"

Ryuu chuckles nervously. "Well, I guess I should take my own advice in that case. Though something good did some out of this." Their hands naturally gravitate towards each other, and Ryuu gives Sougo's fingers a gentle squeeze. 

"I wish we had gone down a more conventional relationship path," Sougo sighs. "I would have liked to remember being with you for the first time..." 

Ryuu's grip on his hand only gets stronger. "I'll make sure we both remember our first time as an official couple."


End file.
